Life in Snippets
by DevinTowerwood
Summary: This is the story of Max Caulfield in the alternate universe of Life is Strange. While the storm shall surely come on October 11, Max knows nothing about that just yet, and instead focuses on the important things: making friends, getting a girlfriend (or two), and impressing her photography teacher. It's just like Life is Strange, but with more trans characters and super powers.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: _Life in Snippets_ is a novel-length fan fiction available on my Tumblr. However, I wanted to write a prequel to it, as well as potentially rewrite the original fic. This would be the starting point of the prequel. Enjoy.

* * *

Max had been super on-again off-again when it came to extracirriculars ever since she started school. While her parents (please see: Mom) pushed for her to be in athletics, they learned about ten minutes into her first soccer game that she wasn't cut out for them. Despite the fact that the team was composed of entirely six year olds, everyone else seemed to grasp that you couldn't just stop playing when you were tired, that there was a social contract to try and win. Max, on the other hand, had stepped out to snack on oranges for the rest of the game, insisting that it was too hot to play.

That pretty much set the tone for everything else her parents tried to get her involved in. Gymnastics, Tae Kwon Do, Girl Scouts - it was lucky that she made friends with Chloe, or else she may never have gotten exercise as a kid. It had been even worse in Seattle, where Max had preferred to stay cooped up in her room playing WoW and Elder Scrolls games.

With all that in mind, it's pretty easy to see why Max hesitated in front of the door of the LGBTQI+ Spectrum club room some Monday early in the school year. Although she knew one of the girls in the leadership, Courtney, from orientation and the Girls' Dorms, her experiences with GSAs and the like so far had been pretty bad. Her school's GSA in Washington had been run by a straight cis girl who had, over the course of a few months prior to Max attending, dropped the membership from 21 members to 5. It had been, well... not what she was hoping.

Max was just about to give up, turn around, and head back to her dorms. She was so ready to do it. Sure, this might be one of her best opportunities to meet other queer people, yes this could set her up to have friends with a shared identity, yes she could reaffirm that she'd listened to Courtney's recommendation, but she just-

"Hey, you here for Spectrum?"

Max snapped out of her liminal trance and realized there was another person in the hallway - a tall girl approaching the same door she was standing in front of. Wait, not just a tall girl. The tall girl from photography. Victoria. She answered more than half of the questions in class by herself despite the fact that she was constantly on her smart phone. Sure, there had only been five class sessions so far, but she'd quickly made an impression.

And now that they were standing next to each other, Max realized that she really was quite tall. Unfortunately, all this time spent staring had given Victoria enough time to be standing in front of the door, becoming increasingly uncomfortable without a response.

"Like, are you gay?" she asked, opening her hands up as if this simplified the question (it didn't).

Still, it was enough to shake Max awake. "Y-yeah," she replied, finally, to the first question. Then, just to make things clearer, she stood up a bit straighter, pulled away a hand from the notebook she brought, and indicated with her fingers, "Yes and yes to both."

"Cool." Victoria smirked, reaching past Max's body for the door handle and pulling it open. "After you."

Max bowed her head in appreciation before ducking into the room. Victoria stepped in immediately afterwards, slipping past Max to make her way to the far side of the room, where Courtney sat at the front table. The entrance left you stuck between the white board and tables, which afforded everyone a pretty good look at you before you could get into the class (which Max quickly recognized as a Cultural Anthropology class due to a set of display cases on her side of the room).

With a quick scan, Max recognized a few familiar students: Courtney, Victoria, Evan (also from photography), and a few faces from around campus, though she didn't know their names. Well, seven was better than five, so that was something, and this was more queer-oriented than the GSA had been.

Well, Courtney and Victoria were sitting at the same table, and Max at least knew their names, so . . .  
Max approached their table, and indicated a seat on an unoccupied side. "Is it cool if I sit here?"

Courtney brightened to an extent that had to be fake and said, "Yeah, Max, of course! I'm so glad you came."

As Max took her seat she said, "Well, yeah, I mean. Not one to miss gay stuff."

Victoria snorted and Courtney replied "Awesome!"  
There was something very self-satisfied with Victoria's look for a few seconds, but then the door opened behind Max and her eyes slipped away to whoever entered.

A few seconds later, and Taylor, a third person from photography class, plopped into the chair next to Victoria.  
"Sorry I'm late!" said, turning away from the table to speak to Evan on the other side of the room.

He looked up from a folder he'd been poring over, then up at the classroom clock. It read 5:31, meaning they were one minute behind schedule.  
He shrugged. "You're literally not. We're starting a little late for new people."

"Oh," Taylor replied. Her skin was flushed red, but her forehead was sweaty too - it looked ore like she'd been out in the heat or like she'd run here than that she was embarrassed.  
As she turned back towards Victoria and Courtney, though, she seemed to realize that Max was there. "Oh, hey, you're new!"

Max, however, was not nearly so immune to embarrassment, and felt an anxious cold as the table focused on her. She wasn't even actively doing anything, but just by sitting here she was coming out. It was weird.  
"Uh, yeah," was all she said in reply.

Taylor pointed at Max, face immediately pinched in thought. "Hey, wait; no, yeah. We have class together. You're that shy girl." And then, as if Max didn't perfectly well remember, she added, "Photography."

"Uh, Max."

Taylor snapped her fingers as if she herself had just remembered that and said, "Right! Yeah. You're the one who got here on scholarship, right?"

Max blinked several times, temporarily stupefied. Victoria swatted her (Taylor), but she took no notice.

"Um," was Max's first reply, and without follow-up, Taylor made assumptions.

"Oh, wait, is that like rude to ask? I don't know."

Max shrugged, replying slowly, "No, I just mean."  
What _did_ she mean?  
God, it was going to sound stupid.  
"Like, it's such an anime trope that people even care. I didn't think that actually happened in real life."

Surprisingly, this only seemed to divert attention away from Max to Victoria, as Taylor said, "Look, Tori, Max is a weeaboo too. Now you can have a new gay weeb best friend and I don't have to watch a show about tiny cute girls getting decapitated."

"First of all, it's called Puella Magi and it's fucking awesome, and two-"

As Victoria and Taylor devolved into banter, Courtney shot an apologetic glance over to Max. She made a concerted effort to talk over them: "Sorry about them. I think Taylor's just interested because the last scholarship photography student . . . made some waves."

That comment seemed to catch Taylor's attention again; "Who, Rachel? Well, that's an understatement."

And then, Max's attention was cut by Evan calling out a loud "Yo," having stepped up to the front of the room with his folder in hand. Max hadn't even noticed him writing an outline for the meeting up on the board, or the fact that a few other people had entered in the past few minutes. She estimated there was probably eleven or twelve people in here, including yet another student from her photography class - Alyssa, this really cute girl with a lisp and what could only be described as a church goth aesthetic who spoke even less than Max did.

"So hey guys," he started, scanning everyone quickly, "welcome to the first Spectrum meeting this year. Let's start off with some introductions: name, pronouns, year, and favorite dessert item. I'm Evan, he, him, his; I'm a senior in the Arts program, and I like monkey bread."

He then gestured over to Courtney, who immediately turned her attention inwards towards the rest of the classroom. "Hey everyone, I'm Courtney; Evan forgot to mention that we're co-chairs for Spectrum but whatever; she her hers, and my favorite dessert is lava cake. Oh, and I'm a senior."

She passed it over to Victoria, who was entirely too ready; "I'm Victoria. She her hers, they them theirs, and I'm a senior."  
Max was never very good at staying focused on one thing at a time. Even if she tried to maintain eye contact, she really tended to focus on people's hair, on their mouths, on their clothes. But at the second set of pronouns, her eyes snapped right up to Victoria's, and found her bright green eyes looking right back. The pause in what Victoria was saying only lasted a second, but from what Max could tell, Victoria didn't look away from her until she spoke again.

"My favorite dessert is the snickerdoodle cookies from the bakery off of Jasmine."

Victoria looked to Taylor, whose face was down in her arms on the table, and it took her a second to realize the lull was due to her. When she did, though, she shot up straight and said, "Oh! Right. I'm Taylor Christensen, I'm a senior. Oh, she her hers, and my favorite dessert is fudgecicles."

Max swallowed nervously, snapping her hair ties as she reviewed the order on the board. She wasn't quite sure where she was supposed to look, so she just kept her eyes towards the front, away from Victoria's stare and towards Evan's expectant look.

"Okay, yeah, hey, so I'm Max. She her hers, they them theirs, and I'm a senior with the, um, Arts program. My favorite dessert is . . ."  
 _Crap._  
I should have been using this time to think of desserts.  
Shit. I'm taking too long.

"I, uh, I really like this these cookies you get at Whole Foods. Lu Petit Ecoclier. They're, um, they're French."

Her anxiety must have been pretty obvious, because Evan actually responded with a "Cool" before pointing over to the next person. Max turned inwards on the table for a second before turning her seat around, but she spared enough of a glance to realize that Victoria was looking at her again, eyes flat and a little slitted. Was she glaring? Victoria would always give her this look when Jefferson called on her in class and she missed an answer - as if her speaking had personally offended her. But what could Max have possibly said? She'd been polite every time they'd actually _spoken_ to each other.

Pretty much everyone else was unfamiliar to her, and she couldn't keep track of the names and pronouns - without having a name and face drilled into her day after day, details tended to slip away fast, with nothing solid to cling onto. It was lucky that so many of the students she worked with in classes - like Kate Marsh in music - lived so close. Remembering everyone by the room they lived in had seriously helped keep details about them straight.

Max didn't even realize she'd been stuck in her own head for several minutes until Evan stepped away from the front, and Alyssa moved to the front. Considering Max had never seen Alyssa physically assert herself into any space or conversation before, this caught her eye immediately.

"Hey, everyone, I just wanted to announce the activity I run every year well in advance. As you may or may not know, Spectrum hosts HalloQueen on the Saturday before Halloween. We bring in a local - well, local-ish - drag king or queen and put on our own drag show. It's kinda big because lots of kids go, and it's expensive because we need to pay the performer and have lots of snacks-"

"- and booze," Victoria interrupted.

Alyssa rolled her eyes but just continued, "Well, that's not part of the budget. Anyway, we need to start fundraising earlier than last year, so I'm trying to organize . . ."  
And although Max was interested in this event, her focused dropped, and she let herself take a look at everyone else in the club again. Victoria's eyes were finally off her, which was nice, and instead on Taylor, whose face was again lying on her arms. Victoria brought her hand up into Taylor's hair and began to scratch her scalp, and although she said nothing, Taylor leaned into it like a cat.

 _Oh. I guess that makes sense._

Max hadn't known those two were together. Then again, they sat together in class all the time, always talking just quietly enough that Max couldn't hear at the next table over.

Max had been caught staring, but not by Victoria or Taylor - instead, Courtney's attention broke away from Alyssa over to Max. She followed Max's eyes to those two, then back to Max. Once she'd established eye contact, she put on a shallow smile and rolled her eyes.  
Apparently, this was normal.

Max started to fidget with her hair ties again.

Courtney standing up didn't quite break Max out of her reverie, but when Alyssa sat down and Courtney started talking, Victoria broke contact with Taylor, and all three of them turned to look. There was just something about the way she talked that demanded attention.

"Hey everyone! As I said before, I'm Courtney, and I tend to head up organizing events for Spectrum. That being said, if you want to plan activities as part of Spectrum, come talk to me before or after a meeting, or at my dorm on the weekends. Anyway, I'm sure most of you are here for the more frequent social stuff as well as the big events, so let me give you the run-down."

Courtney spun around, grabbed a marker, and started adding to the side that Evan hadn't already taken up with the agenda.  
"So, Dana Ward hosts a bi-weekly movie night on Thursdays, and she's asked me to announce that it is specifically open to members of Spectrum and the queer community in general - we've got flyers here you can take, and there are more around the school."

Victoria snorted as soon as the movie night had been brought up, but Courtney showed no response. Max found this newfound tendency . . . irksome. She definitely hadn't tried this around Mr. Jefferson, but she seemed very willing to push at her fellow students. When Max had seen the jewelry, the fancy clothes, the fancy camera, she had (other than being jealous) hoped that Victoria wasn't a bully. For now, though, she was just making Max uncomfortable.

Courtney made a few more announcements before saying the meeting was adjourned early, but asking people to stick around and socialize before heading out. Two people promptly ignored this suggestion and left, and Max . . . Max wasn't sure if she'd be the third.  
At least, until Courtney came and sat on the table next to her, effectively trapping her at the table with her and the others.

"So, Max!" she started with her characteristic pep, while Taylor and Victoria started a conversation of their own. "Do you think you'll keep coming? Like, to these or any of the activities?"

"I, uh . . ."  
 _I don't know. You seem really nice but Evan seems pretentious and Alyssa seems super serious and Victoria's kind of rude and I don't think Taylor likes me and-  
She's expecting an answer out loud, and I think she wants to hear a 'yes'._  
"I mean, that movie night seems cool. I've met Dana."  
 _It's super low pressure and this might mean Dana is gay? She complimented me the first time we talked on my outfit and everyone is aware I am a lame dresser. Even if she's totally fake, it was nice and I could stand more of it. In a gay or not-gay way._

This time, it was Taylor who snickered and turned her attention over to Max. "Yeah, it'll probably be super cool until Juliet realizes Dana is hanging out with 'the gays' and tries to protect her from 'the rumors'."

Max cringed at the description, even if she generally didn't like getting information second-hand like this. "Yikes. Is . . . Juliet like that?"

"Aggressively heterosexual and thick as a brick?" Victoria leaned in a little as she said it, delighted at the opportunity to share her thoughts on the subject. "Definitely."

Max shrugged, a little confused as to why Juliet would be such a deterrent from movie night with Dana.  
"So . . . are you guys gonna go? To Dana's thing?" Max focused on Victoria, whose eyebrows quirked at the question.

Once she recognized that Max was serious, Victoria rolled her eyes dramatically and responded, "I'm certain I'll find something better to do than hang out with that bimbo."

Max shrugged again, more to deflect recognition of what Victoria had said than anything, but turned to Taylor next.  
Taylor, who seemed positively surprised Max was even asking her, blinked for a few seconds before saying, "Oh. Um. I don't think so."

Before Max even turned, Courtney started in, "Well, it's a Spectrum event now, basically, so I have to go. Plus, Dana has really good snacks."  
Victoria shot her a glare so obvious that Max almost snorted, but figured it might not be endearing right now.  
"What?" Courtney asked, "she _does_."

The chatting continued for a few more minutes, but as things kept going, Max became increasingly aware that these three knew each other far better than she knew any of them. It's not like it was surprising, per se, what with her being a transfer student, she just hadn't realized these three were friends. Or girlfriends? Either way, Max grew quieter and quieter, more and more awkward, sinking gradually back into her seat to divert attention away from herself.

Eventually, Max worked up the nerve to leave, seeing an effective escape route through the center of the tables behind her.  
She said, "Hey, um, I think I'm gonna go. I'll see you guys in class."

"Hmm? Oh, yeah, see you Max," said Taylor, reaffirming that she could only barely remember Max moment to moment.

"Thanks again for coming, Max," Courtney said with a smile. Max could tell that something about her performance today had not left Courtney impressed, and her smiles were getting faker.

"Yeah, see ya," Victoria said, barely sparing her a glance as she got up.

Max stood there awkwardly, just out of her seat, for a brief second before turning around and heading out the door. She expected to hear it swing shut behind her, and it was only the delay in it swinging closed that alerted her that somebody was following her out. She turned around.

Victoria. Oh.  
Wait, what? Why?

Max had no idea what to verbalize in response to this, but luckily, Victoria took the lead. Or, at least, she took the lead in letting an awkward look cross her lips, obviously hesitating to say something.

"Oh, hey," Max finally said, hoping the acknowledgement would get Victoria to talk.

"Hey Max. Hey, like, are you nonbinary? You said you used they/them pronouns in there and-"

Oh.  
 _Oh!_

"Oh!" Max interrupted, and Victoria immediately cut off what she was saying. "Yeah, like, I'm trying to figure that out, I guess. I guess nonbinary is probably a pretty good word for it, but I still mostly use she her hers."

Victoria's posture totally changed. She placed one hand on her leg and the other on her hip, leaning forward a little. For once, instead of her eyes looking flat or narrowed, they were bright and earnest. "Yeah, I mean, I do too."

Max blinked. "Oh! Right! You use they/them. Do you have a preference?" Max figured she had, right off the bat, found another woman-aligned nonbinary person. Score one for coming to this meeting, then!

Victoria lifted her hand from her leg over her chest, "Oh, probably she her hers. Like, I'm binary for sure, I just like they/them as like, a social convention."

Max felt like she was missing something. "Wait so . . . you're cis but you use they/them . . .?" Although she tried to help it, a cautious edge of incredulousness crept into her voice. She kept careful eye contact, hoping to seem less judgey, but she was pretty sure she wasn't pulling it off.

"What?" Now it was Victoria's turn to blink stupidly for a second, before realizing the source of their miscommunication. "Oh, no, like, I'm totally trans."

Now Max was embarrassed.  
"Oh!" she said.  
 _That sounds too surprised, Max._  
"I didn't know."  
 _That's kind of the point, Max._  
"Not that it's like, like I should know, I just mean-"

Victoria waved a hand, cutting Max off. "Nah, don't worry. I'm super lucky and kind of loaded and I got on androgen blockers. But I'm kind of an ungrateful bitch because I'm really not stealth." Victoria shrugged, a grimace mirroring the movement.

Max shook her head, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "No, no, I think that's super cool. It's . . . nice. I wish I could be like that."

Victoria's eyes were wide and staring again, but this time Max could see the gears moving somewhere behind them, some problem bouncing around for a few seconds of silence.  
Then, springing back into animation, she said, "Get your phone out. I'm giving you my number."

Max was taken aback, but on several levels, was very willing to comply.  
"Oh, uh, okay," she said, pulling it out.

Victoria explained, "Like, we're in the same program, we're in the same class, we're probably the only two trans students in a senior class of 80 - why not stick together?"

Max found a lot of people cute, to be honest. To keep it from being debilitating, she mostly had to let it fade out into white noise, pretend she couldn't notice it. But now that Victoria was insisting on giving her number to Max, and Max was doing her best to input it, her hands were shaking.  
Victoria was super cute, and she was not filtering that out right now.

Once Max had the number in and had Victoria verify she'd put it in correctly, Max gushed, "Thank you so much. I don't really know like, anyone here, and it's been super weird, and-"

"Don't worry about it."

Max settled back down into an embarrassed, but happy smile.  
Victoria returned it with a smirk, but she held Max's eyes longer than most. Hers were just so bright and warm, and Max found it hard to look away.

After perhaps a too-long moment, Max could feel her blush worsening, so she said, "Thanks."

Victoria nodded, finally blinking, though so slowly it only served to highlight her pretty eyes and gold-flecked eye lashes and fantastic eye shadow and wow; Max could not be bothered to put this level of effort into her own appearance but wow was she dazzled by it.

 _"Like, are you gay?"_ Max heard, almost resonant in her mind.

"See you around, Max Caulfield," Victoria said, that same smirk on her face as she turned and re-entered the club room.

Max took in a deep breath, pulling her bangs away from her forehead and burrowing her hand in her hair.  
"Okay, yeah, I'm gay. I'm pretty gay."

Max took one last look at the newly-entered number, and slipped her phone into her pocket, leaving the hallway in a bit of a daze.


	2. Chapter 2: Friends?

**Friends?**

 **Summary:** Cliques are hard to deal with as the new kid, even if everybody seems to want you. It doesn't make it any easier when pretty girls are everywhere. Maybe things will be easier after the party on Thursday.

* * *

 **September 3, 2013: 11:53am**

It was the fourth day of The Language of Photography, the fifth day that Max could say they'd met with Mark Jefferson personally, and they still couldn't decide if they liked how he taught yet. They knew he was an interesting person, totally. An fascinating person with a powerful photography style and a globally successful career. Max _felt_ like they could listen to him forever. The problem was, Max could only listen to him for maybe a minute before losing track of what was going on.

The man didn't write down anything he said! It wasn't Max's fault! Most teachers wrote on a chalk- or whiteboard while they were talking. Ms. Grant gave out small packets and replicated the material on the board while she talked. Whatever Jefferson's skill set might be, it didn't extend to pedagogy.

Max hoped this wasn't what college was like.

There was only a few people in the room that Max knew, even though they'd done introductions and taken a picture together on the first day. Well, 'a few' constituted about half the class in this case - it was tiny, with people sprinkled around as if they all needed as much space as Max - but there was Alyssa, Victoria, Taylor? (she was pretty sure), and Kate with familiar faces. Taylor and Victoria had both given them a smile when they walked in late, but they'd chosen an unoccupied desk in the back-center of the room, too skittish to sit with them in class.

The bell rang, interrupting something Max hadn't even heard, but they were brought back to an, "Ahhh, well, I guess that will do."

As everyone rose from their seats, Jefferson continued, louder over the chair-scraping, "All right, it's lab tomorrow, so make sure to bring your equipment. Alyssa, if you still don't have a camera tomorrow, you can use one of the spares in the meantime and oh - make sure you've finished chapter 2 by then, even if it's not due until Thursday. We'll be breaking your photographs down to the most basic elements, so it's best that you have clear understandings of the definitions. We're going for precision, not style. See ya."

Max jumped as they exited the room, finding themself flanked by Victoria and Taylor. Even though they smiled and Taylor raised her hand into a wave, it took Max a second to realize they were friendly.

"Jesus!"

Taylor flinched back, but was quick to recover, tapping Max's shoulder as if it would calm them down. "Sorry! sorry!," she said, eyes wide, embarrassed. "Are you okay?"

Max found their hand clutching at their chest to protect their heart, and shrunk down, wiping embarrassment like sweat from their face.  
"Oh, no, no, it's good, I'm okay - just didn't see you."

After a brief pause, Max glanced between the two, as they looked back expectantly, then added, "Do you . . . need something? Am I in the way?"

Victoria waved away the thought. "Nah, we were just going to walk with you if that's cool. Taylor wanted to invite you to something before you scurried away."

"Oh. Oh?" Max nodded their head, and they turned to start walking. "What's up?"

"So-" Taylor started, looping her thumbs on the straps of her backpack and pulling it closer to her. Her nails were coated on one hand with black nail polish, pink on the other - something Max had never noticed before. "- there's kind of this thing Thursday. A Vortex Club party, like our first one of the year (Except for our retreat, I guess). Anyway, you should come! I can tell Courtney to put you on the guest list and-"

Nervousness set in quickly, but Max just tried to keep their eyes forward. However, anxiety and impulsiveness don't always mix, so Max cut in, "What's the Vortex Club?"

Victoria scoffed, and Max could somehow hear the roll of her eyes. "The Vortex Club is the _real_ reason to come to Blackwell. When law schools see Blackwell, and they see Vortex Club, they see wealth, they see power, they see dedication. Even if it isn't there, they see it. And the same goes for the arts and sciences, even more so."

"Oh."

The trio pushed their way out the double doors into the courtyard. As they descended the steps, Max asked, "And they're having a party?"

" _We're_ having a party," Taylor corrected. "Courtney's chair, and Nathan's co-chair. The four of us basically run this bitch - club and school, I guess - and yeah, we have parties. Nathan's dad, uh, like, he pays for us to have all sorts of events. Campus spirit events and club retreats and -"

"Basically everything but the booze and weed, but honestly some of that, too," Victoria interrupted.

Taylor shrugged. "Basically, yeah."

Confusion brought an itch to the back of Max's head, and they tried to scratch it away as they asked, "So, wait, like, you just have parties and stuff, but it's like a status symbol to be a part of it or something?"

"Oh, no!" Taylor protested, but didn't immediately have another explanation.

"Nah, Courtney makes sure we're reputable people who do good work and make connections with professionals and all that. Well, her and Sean. But either you work with Courtney or you pay your dues to the club somehow, and we all get good exposure. _And_ good vodka."

"Huh."

Although they'd had no intention of it, Max found themself in the dining commons alongside Taylor and Victoria. Their Prozac didn't leave them with much of an appetite, so Max hadn't really gone except for dinner yet.

"So where's the party at, then? On Thursday."

"Oh, so, um, it's the first party of the year and technically everyone is invited so we're using the gym. Normally we'd do a house party somewhere but this one should be kind of big, so. Yeah."

Max asked, "Should I wear something?"

"Probably something," Victoria replied.

When Max gave her a blank look, she just snickered.

Max tugged at her jacket, shrugging as they asked, "So like, is this good?"

Victoria's eyes snapped down to Max's legs, then worked their way slowly back towards their face. Max found it entirely unbelievable that she hadn't already looked her outfit over and found it lacking, but at least she was going through the effort of pretending that it was hard to say.

"Uhhh?" Victoria asked, arms slowly raising to a shrug.

"You can try it," Taylor chimed in, craning her neck to look at Max while grabbing a food tray, "but Courtney might hunt you down if you do. She hates it when people don't try and look good."  
Beat.  
"No offense."

"Uh, none taken, I guess."

After a few minutes split apart to get their own meals, the three of them sat down together, with Max placed opposite of Victoria and Taylor.

Just as they were settling in, Victoria let out a sigh of disgust. Max tilted their head to the side in question, quick to dip a fry in ketchup and start eating.

Victoria responded, " _Of course_ she's a vegan. God."

"What? Who?" Taylor asked.

Victoria's eyes focused somewhere behind Max, and they turned to look at whatever she was staring at.

"Kate Marsh."

As soon as Victoria said it, Max realized how she'd pieced that together (not that it was hard) - Kate had already taken one burger from the rack labeled with a hand-sized sign that read 'V', and she was taking another. They self-consciously glanced at their own burger, not yet connecting Victoria's tone with what Kate was doing.

 _I really should go vegan, but . . ._

"Wait, I don't get it, why 'of course'?" Taylor asked, turning towards Victoria as she [Victoria] twirled her fork in a bowl of stir-fry.

Victoria rolled her eyes. "Because she's just so good, right? She's got all those environmentalism stickers on her laptop like, hello, we all live on the West Coast, chill the fuck out."

Victoria paused, so Max thought it was a safe time to start responding. However, as soon as they opened their mouth, Victoria continued.

"Plus, she founded an Abstinence Club what, the second day of school? And she carries her Bible in her bag, too. I mean, I have honest-to-God never met someone who so vehemently did not want to fuck."

While Taylor's face snapped into a critical side-eye glare, Max asked, "So what? I mean, like, she knows what she's about. I may not be into the whole god thing, but I think it's kind of cool. Like her whole deal."

"Well, I think it's kind of annoying."

That comment soured the mood further, and Max stopped talking, instead focusing on getting the right amount of ketchup on each french fry before eating it. Taylor went back to her food as well (french fries too, but minus a burger, or anything else for that matter), and the momentum of Victoria's complaints collapsed right into silence.

After a few seconds, Max heard from behind, "Oh, hey guys."

As they turned, Kate Marsh shuffled into view, holding a tray with several plates and bowls with both hands.

"Hey Kate," Max said, flinching a little out of humiliation. There was always the _possibility_ that she heard, after all.

"Hi Kate," Taylor said, managing a little wave.

Victoria just smiled a closed, strained smile until Kate passed by her, at which point her expression immediately fell back into annoyance.

A few seconds later, Taylor's eyes snapped back up from her food and her eyes widened in realization. Then, smiling, she nudged Victoria in the ribs and said, "Are you still just jealous that Kate got to be Jefferson's assistant instead of you this year?"

Again, Victoria rolled her eyes so hard that Max couldn't tell if she thought the idea was stupid or if Victoria was getting ready to yell.

Luckily, she wasn't. "No, I don't need that to be exceptional."  
Beat.  
"I just think she's fake, is all."

Although they couldn't quite put their finger on why, Max felt a little hurt by that.

Max hadn't known what to expect when they were assigned 'Science Lab' as part of their mandatory schedule. They had known even less of what to expect after finding out that The Art of Science was a mixed science class focused on hands-on experiments and projects in biology, physics, chemistry, and engineering. Luckily, Max was fairly certain they had been partnered up with the smartest kid in class, because they were halfway through their first lab and he'd only looked at the instructions once. They were running a change-of-state physics experiment about loss of heat and taking the temperature of ice water or something like that, but their partner (Warren, they were pretty sure) had been conducting the whole thing while they took the temperature.

He also was pretty much conducting the conversation, too.

"But no, despite what anyone says, I refuse to believe that Chell is just a lucky test subject. Valve's original and all, but I don't think they'd break from all storytelling convention and make her totally unrelated from the rest of the cast, small as it is. I may not be sure about the whole 'the heart box has Caroline's body in it' thing but Caroline is for sure her mom, so GLaDOS is basically her family at this point. Just, you know, her sick, twisted, abusive family."

"Oh, so just like a real family, then," Max replied, totally deadpan.

"Whoah Max, uh, kind of dark there." Warren scratched the side of his face, a little off-guard. "But like, technically yeah, I guess. I wonder if that's the point. Like, why center an abuse story in a comedy game? Ah, well. So, uh, how much time do we have left?"

"Technically? Just whenever it boils, which is supposed to be in like . . . 9 more. Uh. Four minutes and thirty seconds. But really until class is over so," Max tapped their phone where it sat on the desk so the time would appear. 1:48. "So, like forty more minutes."

Warren jumped right into another topic, or maybe deeper into the whole Portal thing, but Max's attention began to wander to the table behind them. Alyssa-from-photography sat with her back towards them and Warren, hair pulled back to avoid spilling over the slide she was staring at on her microscope. Across from her sat another (tiny) girl from photography, but she had spoken so little last week that Max couldn't remember her name, although they were certain she'd introduced herself to Max on the first day. She leaned over the desk, elbow on a blank notebook page while talking, although her voice was soft enough that Max couldn't hear her even a few feet away.

However, when Alyssa spoke, Max could hear fine.

"I dunno, the Vortex club and I aren't exactly B-F-Fs, especially now that Courtney's in charge. They probably wouldn't even let me in."

Max turned in their seat, aware that this cut Warren off mid-sentence without knowing what, exactly, they'd interrupted. The squeak it produced on the seat must have been enough to get Alyssa's attention, because she turned while the other girl leaned a bit to the side to get a look.

Max tucked a tuft of hair behind their ears and said, "Um, are you guys talking about the party this Thursday? In the gym?"

The tiny girl opposite of Alyssa responded quickly, "Oh, yeah. Are you going? The school uses student staffing for events so I'm like, carrying sound equipment or something."

Max nodded. "Yeah, Taylor invited me, from photography. Apparently she and Victoria and Courtney-"

Max hadn't quite finished before being interrupted by a loud sigh of disgust from Alyssa, which caught them so off-guard they just stopped speaking.

Alyssa, taking a few seconds to recognize that demanded an explanation, said, "They're just assholes. They run the Vortex Club, but they seem to think that means running the school, too. I mean, they're basically the Plastics, except where it's been uncool for girls to tear each other down for a decade or whatever."

 _So they really are important. At least, important enough to be hated._

"Uhh, what's the Vortex Club and who are you talking about?" Warren asked, still stirring the near-boiling water although Max had stopped taking measurements. Then, immediately distracting himself, he looked at the other girl and said, "Warren, by the way. I'm Warren, I mean."

"Stella," she replied.

Max responded, "It's like a social frat, kind of, for like high schoolers. And they do community stuff and it looks good on a transcript."

"Eh," Alyssa shrugged, a casual negation. Following up, she said, "I mean, it's just an enclave for rich kids to party and everyone else to lick their shoes for an officer-ship or a recommendation or something. It's living proof of the whole 'It's not what you know, just who you know' thing. It's bullshit."

Max was becoming increasingly disinterested in their whole deal, which wasn't too hard when it had sounded sketchy from the start. They leaned down, deflating until their elbows pressed into their legs and they held their head up on their hands. It was only seventy seconds until their experiment would be finished, and they wouldn't even notice.

"So, like, what's their deal then? I know Courtney's Spectrum co-chair and the Vortex Club chair, but like, are Victoria and Taylor just part of her posse, total Plastic style?"

And for the first time since Max had known her, Alyssa laughed. It was kind of a weird laugh, projected from the chest and with a bit of a snort. She recovered quickly, though, and said, "Right, right, you weren't here last year. No. No, um, other way around. Victoria is the leader, 'Sweet-T' and Courtney are just her sycophants. Well, Courtney definitely is. Taylor's . . . Taylor."

A question quickly jumped to the front of Max's mouth, but they held it back for a second.

Just a second, though. "Isn't Taylor Victoria's girlfriend?"

Alyssa's eyes shifted back and forth between Max and Stella on either side of her, as if one of them would give her the answer. "Uhhhhhhh?"

Stella chimed in, "I'm not even really sure she likes girls. She hasn't dated anyone since she moved, I don't think. And you know Rachel would have blasted it if she'd fucked anyone. Those two got pretty damn petty before Rachel took off."

Alyssa shook her head. "God. But you're right. Even if Victoria let any guy but Jefferson within five feet of her, Nathan would probably knife 'em, or like, disappear them or whatever rich people do when they don't like someone."

Max was getting confused, as nothing Stella and Alyssa were referring to Max knew anything about. Who was this Nathan kid everyone kept mentioning? Was he friends with Victoria? Was he pining after her or something? It only seems right that the rich boy running the school would be with the queen bee.

 _I wonder why they're not dating already. Maybe he's a huge douche? Or gross-looking, maybe. She doesn't seem like the sort of person who would date someone just for their money._

Max and Warren's experiment was boiling, and neither of them were paying attention. While Max was trying their best to pay attention to the conversation, Warren seemed engrossed in his thoughts.

At least, until Max realized he was mumbling, and he decided to let the other in on the question: "Okay, like, sorry to back up like seven steps but Courtney who?"

"Wagner," Alyssa replied.

Warren's eyes widened suddenly, and he leaned over the desk to get closer access to the conversation. "Wait, Courtney Wagner? And she's from here, right?"

Alyssa and Stella nodded in unison.

"Dude, holy fuck, Courtney used to run my Robotics team back when I was in like sixth grade. I didn't know she was all popular and shit now. How'd that happen?"

Alyssa shrugged again, but provided no answer. Warren wiggled in his seat a little, seemingly perplexed by this development, totally unaware of what Max had just realized - 1) they hadn't taken notes for several minutes 2) the experiment was about to boil over and 3) Ms. Grant was approaching their desk.

"Now, I think that's far enough Mr. Graham, Ms. Caulfield, you can take your last reading and move on. I'd prefer neither of you burned yourself just yet."

Max felt a twinge of embarrassment somewhere amidst the stabbing pain of shame, but just picked up their notebook while Warren checked the thermometer.

"I think my mutagen's a little unstable," Warren said, trying to read the thermometer through condensation.

Max shook their head.

 _This damn kid._

Media literacy was the class where Max had gotten to know Courtney last week, as they'd sat down at a random seat before being ambushed by a highly interactive class. From the syllabus, it looked like the class focused heavily on super heroes over the past century, from the origin of the masked vigilante ( _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ , which they were reading for the first three weeks of class) through the start of the cold war. It was not what they had been expecting at all, and now, knowing Courtney a little better, Max was a little surprised to find that Courtney knew a lot more about comics than Max did. Max had just watched the _Spider-Man_ trilogy like, a dozen times or so. After spending last class period with Warren, Max was getting the impression they were out of the media loop.

"Okay, now, it looks like most of you are sitting in the same seat at last week. Why don't we try switching it up, so you're sitting with someone new?"

The teacher for this class, Ms. Hargrave, was a tall white woman in her late forties or early fifties with dark (dyed, question mark?) hair. She didn't talk a lot, as far as teachers go, letting the students' circle of desks guide the conversation on the book. It felt a lot like AP English, actually, just without the opportunity for college credit.

Max's eyes shifted away from the teacher back to Courtney for a moment, then shrugged before they both stood. Everyone converged into the middle of class for a few seconds like they had done over and over getting to know each other on the first day, then began to pair off. Max was terrible at this, of course, and everytime they looked to someone who looked friendly, that person made eye contact with someone else, raised a hand, and they veered off to the edge of the room.

It was a loose formation of visible pairs and triads when Max began to wonder if, somehow, they simply had been left out. That is, until they turned around, and found someone with a hand half-raised, as if trying to get their attention.

Oh. Kate.

"Hey Max."

"Hey Kate." Max paused for a brief second, then asked, "Do you want to . . .?" They gestured back and forth between themself and Kate.

Kate smiled a pinched smile and nodded before backing up, taking the chair Max had been sitting in half a minute ago. Max settled themself down in Courtney's former chair, and then the class was settled after a few more seconds.

As they launched into a discussion on how the Scarlet Pimpernel both resembled and contrasted modern and contemporary super heroes and vigilantes, Max's interest waned as they realized they knew considerably less than many of the other students. Luckily, Kate seemed to be having trouble with the topic too, as after a few minutes her eyes started to jump back and forth between her classmates and her notebook, where her notes were turning into margin doodles.

Pretty _good_ margin doodles, actually.

"That's really cute," Max whispered, nodding at the cartoon scene forming on the page. Only one character was fully formed so far - a bird girl (judging by the eyelashes that cartoonists insist on to distinguish animal genders) with a wing held up, a single feather extended above like a finger. Next to her, just a torso, was a rabbit wearing a cross.

Kate turned a little to see Max, then back down at the page following their gesture. She pursed her lips a little, a little embarrassed as she tucked a tuft of her hair behind her ear.

"Thank you," Kate replied, even more quietly. Her eyes returned quickly to the professor as she started talking, but Max was a little less interested in the lecture now that they had a clearer look at the rabbit character.

"Is that, um, like your fursona?" Max asked. The cross matched the one on Kate's neck, so it seemed like an easy guess.

Kate's eyes widened in surprise for a fraction of a second, startled, shrugged just as quickly, and whispered back, "No. I mean, I just think it's cute. And it feels weird to actually draw people."

Max paused, but then asked, "But that's you, right? The bunny?"

To Max's surprise, Kate did not reply immediately, but instead blushed. "I mean . . . yeah."

 _Sounds like a fursona._

Max found Kate's embarrassment endearing, the color in her cheeks pretty and warm. They looked up from the page and straight at Kate now, which only dragged her attention away from the discussion entirely to look back at Max.

"Well," Max said dryly, "I think she's pretty cute."

Perhaps frightened by Max's attempts at flirting, Kate seemed only more uncomfortable, unable to look away for a few seconds before a student raising their hand drew her attention away again.

"Thank you," Kate whispered again.

Max packed up slowly after class, trying to somehow get their notebook, wallet, pen, and sticky notes to take as long as Kate's notebook, class reading, pen and pencil and highlighter that all fit into a pencil case, etc etc. Somehow they pulled it off, though, and they slung their bag over their shoulder as Kate put on her backpack.

Max took a hesitant step towards the door, hoping that Kate would oh-so-coincidentally decide to leave at the same time, but she made no move. Instead, her eyes just locked onto Max, who immediately froze.

"You're in room 219, right? Right across the hall from me? I'm in 222."

Max blinked, caught off guard. Then they responded, "Uh, yeah, that's me. I'm sorry, I didn't even notice we were neighbors. Has Victoria's stereo system been annoying you, too?"

Kate waved it off, finally working around her desk so they could leave. "Nah, I kind of like her music, actually. But I was thinking - because we've got this and Photography together and all, and we're neighbors - maybe you'd like to study together sometime? When I took two visual media classes, I thought I wouldn't have to read very much, but . . ."

Max nodded, "I made the same, fatal mistake. I thought - oh hey Courtney."

Courtney was obviously waiting for them, standing just outside the door with her eyes on her phone. As Max addressed her, though, Courtney plastered on a smile, just slow enough that Max didn't believe it.

"Hey Max," she said, then seemed to realize that Kate stopped just outside the door as well, awkwardly standing outside of Max and Courtney's conversation but obviously close enough to hear.

Kate initially looked around the hallway instead of at Courtney, but noticing that her eyes had fallen onto Kate, Kate's eyes dropped to her.

"Hey there Courtney. Long time no see."

With the same sort of sluggish delay as her smile, Courtney eventually responded, "Yeah, hey Katie."

After another uncomfortable second laden with way too much tension that Max didn't understand, Courtney looked back to Max and only reinforced her smile.

"Max. Did Taylor already invite you to the party Thursday? I was hoping you'd come spend some time with the Vortex Club, have some fun, and maybe," she raised the back of her hand to her mouth as if there was someone trying to overhear - but not Kate, as she wasn't even hiding her mouth from her - "some wine." She dropped her hand, clasping it over her phone instead. "Or vodka, if you're a vodka girl."

Max felt a little twinge of annoyance at 'girl', but shrugged it off. "Yeah, Taylor and Victoria grabbed me after photography to invite me. I'll come, I promise."

Pleased, Courtney slipped into a more natural smile. "Great. It should be a blast. Text me if you want details or anything," she said, already turning to go. "I'll see ya later, Max. Later . . . Kate."

"Yeah," Kate replied, then, when Courtney was too far away to hear, "I'll see you."

Max turned back to Kate, wondering why things had been so awkward between her and Courtney. However, while they were busy wondering, they were also just staring at Kate silently.

Kate pulled some strands that had fallen out of her bun down to her neck, then said, "Wait, yeah, I think you were saying something?"

Max blinked. "I was? What?"

Kate shrugged. "I dunno." Beat. "Oh! Right, I was inviting you to study. Media homework, lots, unexpected-" they began to walk together as she recounted the list, Kate rolling her hand as if trying to say 'et cetera' despite actually saying it all.

Max snapped their fingers into a finger gun, "- fatal mistake! Right, yeah."

When Max didn't follow up their realization with a response, Kate's eyes just shifted about awkwardly, puffing up her cheeks as she smiled in the awkwardness.

That helped Max remember to respond. "Oh, yeah. I mean, yes. I'd love to. I study way better with people anyway. When?"

As the two of them made it into the courtyard, Max nodded towards the fountain, and they sat down together. The sound of the fountain was pleasant white noise, drowning out the conversations of students scattered through the courtyard or leaving the classrooms.

Kate shrugged again, but still responded, "Oh, I don't know. I'm pretty busy on week days but maybe the weekend? We could actually go somewhere in town if we wanted. I don't have a car, but the town's pretty small. I mean, you're from Seattle, right?, so I guess it's all pretty quaint around here but-"

Max shook their head. "Actually, I grew up in the Bay."

Kate's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Really? I thought you were a big city girl visiting the Nowhere fishing village, like Victoria."

Max replied, "I'm nonbinary, actually."

Kate's face was blank, unreadable, as if Max had just spoken German mid-conversation. After a few seconds, though, "Oh, okay. So, uh, you're not a big city _person,_ then?"

"Nope, not really." Max had forgotten where Victoria said she was from, but they did remember that it was a big city. Or was it just the clothes? People don't wear brand name clothes in towns with 4,000 people in them - most people wouldn't even recognize them if you did. Maybe that's how Victoria got her friends - she found the only two kids in town who would recognize a Louis Vuitton.

"Huh. Well, is there a place in town you'd like to go? I live a bit closer to Tillamook so I don't actually know Arcadia Bay that well."

"Oh, I don't know," Max said, looking forward. The only place that really came to mind was the Two Whales, but Max . . . wasn't so sure it was the right time to go just yet.

Probably not. Not like this.

"I don't really remember anywhere I liked to eat or anything."

Kate leaned forward, holding her chin up with her hand. "Hmm, all right. Well, I tried going downtown during move-in weekend, and there's some nice places there. There's like this coffee lounge I found and it's like the only place that sells vegan stuff in town, so I could stand to go check it out again. It was pretty quiet when I went there, at least."

Max fell quiet, rocking themself a little on the fountain's edge. They studied Kate more closely than they had allowed themself before - her messy bun starting to collapse on itself, her dark, starchy clothes, her unpainted nails, her leggings.

 _This is sounding more and more like a date. Am I crazy? Or just wishfully gay?_

"Hmm," Max hummed, the need to respond forgotten. Kate turned her head back towards Max, cocking her head in curiosity.

She was . . . definitely pretty. If she wanted to, she could be _very_ pretty.

 _Maybe she's one of those open-minded Christians. She seemed cool when I said I was nonbinary, at least. Maybe she's from one of those churches with gay pastors who believes in Love Thy Neighbor and the Sermon on the Mount and that stuff. Or maybe . . ._

Max scanned over Kate's backpack, her clothes, her nails, anything for a potential sign that Kate was queer, but there was nothing. No pride flags, no catchy slogans, just a few buttons of pandas, bigfoots, a UFO, and the Human Rights Campaign logo. But even straight people would show off that logo these days.

Apparently, Max had been sitting and staring long enough for Kate to get uncomfortable, because she finally cut the silence with an "Um."

Max blinked in an effort to clear their head, then replied, "That sounds cool. Just, like, let me know when works for you this weekend? I don't think I have much going on this weekend," _except maybe a hangover Friday_ , Max silently tacked on.

And for what Max realized was the first time they'd seen, Kate smiled brightly. "Awesome, thank you. Maybe I'll buy you some tea to thank you for letting me drag you to the vegan place."

The fact that Max didn't know if they were being flirted with or not left them nervous, but also a little excited. Kate smiling was something special, Max could already tell.  
Maybe there could be more of it over a cup of tea and an art theory textbook.

 **September 3, 6:18pm**

Victoria: do you seriously have nothing to wear

Max: I seriously dont.  
Max: I like things that are soft and familiar, and that usually means I bought it in the ninth grade.

Victoria: wow  
Victoria: i'm genuinely impressed you managed to get Courtney to learn your name wearing anything from last season  
Victoria: what did you do

Max: I showed her a really neat vape trick and she was like 'Wow, Max, that was incredible, do you want to be friends?'

Victoria: tell me you're joking  
Victoria: like i know the story is bullshit but you don't actually vape do you  
Victoria: is there secretly a giant douchebag hiding in that tiny body that only comes out to make vape trick Youtube videos

Max: Ah, yes, I drank a mysterious concoction and now he emerges sometimes without warning

Victoria: genderfluid femme/douche

Max: If smoking weed is douchey then you're actually not far off

Victoria: it's a little douchey  
Victoria: but don't worry, everyone in this entire school is a douche  
Victoria: you'll blend right in

 **September 3, 6:55pm**

Victoria: speaking of which we should smoke sometime

Max: That sounds cool. Maybe at the party Thursday?

Victoria: sure. God knows there will be enough weed there to hotbox the gym so maybe we'll get stoned just from going.

Max: That sounds awful.  
Max: Does seriously everyone smoke? Like I know it's Oregon but still.

Victoria: i'm pretty sure Courtney is literally the only person here who doesn't spend every other weekend lying on the floor watching their hand move before they realize it's been two hours.

Max: Courtney seems... idk, intense? Like in a cool way.

Max: I feel like I'm a high school student but she's the HR person for a shady law firm or something.

Victoria: Courtney's . . . courtney.

A notification appeared at the top of Max's screen notifying them that somebody by the name of bitch-in-training had started following them on Instagram. When they tabbed over, the Instagram turned out to be Victoria's. The top two rows were a mix of selfies and candid shots of Taylor, every one of which looked like it had been carefully picked or cleverly staged.

Victoria: half this school's clubs would die without her, though, she...

The rest of the message cut off, and Max was too busy scrolling down Victoria's Instagram to check. It looked like there was a photo or two every day, although about a month back there was a huge chunk of photos of what looked like Victoria exploring Rome. If anyone had gone with her, they weren't in the photos - just Victoria, beautiful buildings, and clothes Max would never be able to afford. For some reason, Max's envy of Victoria's materialism only encouraged them to keep scrolling, occasionally clicking to read comments. Almost every picture had upward of 100 likes, and there was a read replies bar for all of the thirsty comments and emojis boys left.

 _God, they're gross_ , Max thought, dismissing a photo of Taylor and Victoria together where one of the messages had been particularly . . . fetishy.

But then, Max stumbled across a photo quite unlike the others. For one, Victoria had obviously not taken it, because she was the model. Secondly, the background was so dark that Victoria was the only thing clearly visible. Thirdly, she was only in her underwear, both of which were black and patternless. Lastly, whether because of the lighting on her or the camera filters or her makeup (probably all of these), her skin was so bright that it looked like it glowed, and her underwear was so dark that pieces of her seemed like part of the background rather than the foreground, though there was just enough glare to make it clear that wasn't true.

Max bit their lip nervously, dropping their eyes down to the caption quickly, embarrassed. This caption was much longer than the rest.

 **bitch-in-training**  
It's been almost three years since I started taking hrt. Despite everything I might say on here, it's hard to believe this body is mine after so long. Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don't even recognize myself, and I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. But this is who I am. I'm a sexy bitch. And I love every second of it.  
Credit to madking95 for the photo.  
#transgender #transfemme #personal #hrt #3yearshrt

Curious, Max tapped on the link to madking95, but found all of the pictures locked. Its description read only "Portfolio rejects and commissions / Vortex Club RULES"

Max tapped to request access, then went back to Victoria's page to follow her Instagram. The page had left a question gnawing on Max's mind - or maybe it had just made it chew harder.

Max: Is Taylor your gf?

 _'gf' is more casual than girlfriend, right? I'm not being weird?_

Victoria: no?  
Victoria: she's basically my sister  
Victoria: where'd that come from?

Max: Oh okay.  
Max: And kind of your Instagram but also kind of just . . . I dont know.  
Max: I guess you two just seemed cute.

Victoria: well we are  
Victoria: just not like that

Max wasn't sure how to respond, but, luckily, after a minute or so, another message appeared from Victoria.

Victoria: you could basically just ask to play with her hair and she's basically yours if you want to ask her out, though

Max: Not exactly the plan but good to know I guess?  
Max: Could I play with her hair and not ask her out?

Victoria: idk... that sounds dangerous

Max: Well Ive been known to be dangerous.  
Max: You know. Sometimes. In a cool way.

Victoria: oh?

After about three solid minutes of deliberation, Max pressed 'Like' on Victoria's black and white portrait. After just a few seconds, the "..." appeared next to Victoria's name, but it was at least a minute before she actually responded.

Victoria: oh.

And try though they might, Max couldn't think of any smooth follow-up. Left with the options of either playing it off or trying to be smooth, Max opted for the third choice.  
Just stop texting and try and do some homework instead.


	3. Chapter 3: An Adventure

**Summary:** Max and Victoria take a daytrip down to Portland to buy Max new clothes (Courtney wasn't so happy with the outfit Max wore to her first Vortex Club function). After a surprisingly romantic time at the mall, they have ice cream on a hill at Council Crest Park. Things will never be the same between them.

* * *

 **September 7, 11:20am**

Victoria was almost done putting on her face by the time she heard the knock on her door. That must be her.

"Come in, Max," she called, not looking away from the mirror she used on her desk.

The door opened, and there was a bit of hesitation before it closed. Then, "Hey Victoria."

Sure, Victoria couldn't see her, but she knew exactly what Max would be wearing. A t-shirt or tank top along with that infernal sweat shirt, despite the fact that it had been in the high seventies for the entire month. Max never wore anything different, like Taylor before she had discovered sundresses went with jackets. Luckily, Victoria had prepared for this inevitability.

"There's clothes on the bed for you. You and Courtney are the same size, I'm pretty sure, so everything should fit you fine. I'll do your makeup in a sec."

There was no shuffling to get dressed behind her, so Victoria figured Max must be confused. Then Max said, "Uhh? I mean, aren't we going to buy clothes? Why would I need nice clothes or makeup to buy nice clothes and makeup?"

Victoria sighed, setting down her brush and turning in her chair. Of course, Max was dressed precisely as Victoria had imagined, though she didn't think she'd seen the creepy _Silence of the Lambs_ t-shirt before. _Gross_. Max absolutely could not be left to her own devices.

"Because, Max, we have to see if the nice clothes will look nice on you. That means you should already be wearing something nice so we can see if it'll match. Of course, these aren't your clothes, but they'll at least give us some ideas as we go along. As for the makeup, I want to know how you'll look _in total_ when we go out. And I get that you don't really wear makeup, fine, but if you're going to start going to parties and meeting famous photographers and talking to nice galleries, you're going to have to look more . . . put together."

Max pouted, shoulders sagging as if she was planning on dragging her hands over the ground all day. She said, "I mean, it seems a little misogynist if people are only going to take me seriously when I look nice."

Victoria rolled her eyes. "Of course it is, Max. The world is a sexist place, doubly so in industries _about_ appearances. We're not about to change that when nobody even knows our names."

Max crossed her arms over her chest, but gave no protest. "Fine," she responded, "I'll wear Courtney's clothes."

"Thank you Victoria," Victoria chimed as she turned back around to face the mirror.

"'Thank you Victoria,'" Max repeated, and then the shuffling of clothes being pulled off and replaced began.

Once Max had apparently replaced her shirt, Max started to talk over the sound of her zipper. "So, how'd you get so good at all this? Looking good, I mean. I never really got how girls just seemed to pick it up."

Victoria was satisfied with her face, so she moved on to her eyes. "Youtube, mostly, and my mom. I can't really say I had a choice."

Max was done, but there was still a lot of jangling. Moving change between pants, maybe? "What do you mean?"

Hmm, that's right. Max really might not know. She doesn't have much reason to. "Well, you see, my doctor was a real bitch. Back when I was fifteen, and I was looking to get hormones, my doctor refused to prescribe them until I had 'lived experience' as a woman. And, in his eyes, I guess that meant having long hair, wearing skirts every day, and learning to contour, because that's what it took. I had no fucking clue there were even standards of care at the time. I thought that was procedure."

Max was done changing, so she sat down on the bed next to Victoria's desk. "Wow . . . that's some bullshit," she said.

"Don't I know it." Victoria smirked, swiveling her chair to face Max with one eye mostly done, so the left side of her face looked much heavier. "But hey, don't I make such a pretty girl now?"

Victoria swiveled back to her mirror, expecting no response. However, she could see Max nodding out of the corner of her eye.  
Max said aloud, though so quietly Victoria wasn't sure she knew she was speaking, "You really do."

Victoria refrained from talking further, or looking Max in the eye for a minute until she was done. Once her composure returned, though, she turned towards Max again. "Come on, I'll do you and then we'll go."

* * *

"I still don't see why we have to go all the way to Portland," Max whined from the passenger's seat.

They were just passing through Tillamook, the most depressing county seat imaginable, and Victoria was taking the time to enjoy the low speed limit by leaning into the wind out of her window.

Victoria glanced at Max, unable to comprehend literally a single idea that came out of Max's mouth. "Are you serious right now? You spent what, a quarter of your life in Seattle before moving back to this hick ass county and you don't see why we'd go to a city to go shopping?"

Max shrugged. "There are boutiques in the county with nice clothes."

It was kind of dangerous to emote too much while driving, so Victoria settled for a "Uuuuugggghhhhh," followed up with a, "No, they have hand-stitched sundresses made by old grandmas and secondhand Urban Outfitter designs with Navajo patterns on them. God, Max, did you even leave your house while you were in Washington?"

Now Max looked annoyed. "Yes, Victoria. I was just never very interested in vanity."

Victoria grinned, putting on a more nasally voice, "'I'm not like other girls.'"

"Got that right," Max laughed, the annoyance disappearing from her face as fast as it had appeared.

"Well," Victoria said, "maybe you should have. Vanity suits you."

Max was still smiling, though an unfamiliar look crept onto her face. She was hard to read, given how little she ever animated. "You think so?" she asked.

"Would I be buying you clothes if I didn't?"

Max sunk back into her seat, elbow up on the window sill, though hers wasn't rolled down all the way.  
She looked cocky. It was a good look on her, just like Courtney's clothes were. Max could be cute. It was too bad she didn't seem to know that.

* * *

 **September 7, 2:52pm**

It had been like an hour. It turned out Max had bigger commitment issues with clothes than Courtney's dad had to her mom.

"Yes! Okay, yes, it's cute. God, okay, Max, it's gorgeous, just please, please decide on something to buy."

Max had eschewed everything too feminine once they'd arrived at Pioneer Place and started going through the clothing stores. Victoria had never really been interested in men's fashion, beyond the extent she'd had to wear a suit on occasion after turning twelve or so for gallery showings and things like that. It was hard trying to mash up her stylistic preferences along with Max's absolute assertion that her pants be from the men's section, because 'they're so comfy, and the pockets are endless!' They'd spent the better part of the hour switching between clingy, arms-length shirts and tops, ignoring Max's interest in a leather jacket. Nobody wore a fucking leather jacket in Arcadia Bay _or_ at art events and it would just look weird.

Max's head cocked to the side curiously. She didn't seem frustrated, which was how she had responded the past six times or so Victoria had announced that an outfit was adequate. "Do you really think it's gorgeous?" she asked.

Victoria sighed, slumping back against the changing room hall's wall. Max was trying on a striped, slightly see-through shirt very similar to Courtney's preferred casual look, though she'd paired it with a cardigan with thick, contrasting lines around the edges. Max looked pretty, very pretty, but like everything else, she was concerned that it was too girlish.  
Victoria put her hand to her temple where a headache was rapidly coming on. "Yes, Max, I do. You look good in everything - you're skinny and small, so everything fits you, you look a little professional but not so much that you're overdoing it, the cardigan even matches your lipstick, and while you may have no butt, you're wearing boy jeans, so it's not like anyone would notice if you did."

Max's mouth pinched into a point. It looked a little silly with how her lipstick was smeared (she touched her face constantly), but Victoria could tell she was mulling something over. She turned back around to her stall, looking herself over again.

"Are you sure I'm pretty enough? Like this works?"

Victoria had never seen Max like this. It was no wonder that she avoided vanity - it seemed to make her distressed very easily.

Victoria took a few steps forward so Max could see her face in the mirror. "Of course you're pretty, Max. You were pretty the whole time. I think the thing that's bothering you is that you don't want to be pretty."

"What do you mean?" Max asked, clearly confused.

Victoria exhaled slowly, trying to gather her thoughts. She pinched her own sweater, trying to make an example. "Look," she said, "beauty is all about gender conformity, right? People find women beautiful when they highlight everything about them that is meant to mark them as women. The beauty is in the binary, and you hate that."

Max turned around slowly. As Max looked up at her, Victoria became keenly aware of the short distance between them. Max was so pretty. But was it wrong of Victoria to try and make her be? Even if, from every angle she looked at it, she was looking out for Max?

"But don't you hate that?" Max asked. She didn't seem upset, like Victoria had expected. She seemed . . . gentle. Hesitant. Meek, even, like an animal trying to guess whether Victoria were friendly or not.

Victoria swallowed, then nodded. "I mean, of course I do, Max. But I also love being beautiful, and I love people knowing that I'm beautiful. Wanting it to be some other way doesn't make it so."

Max's eyebrows furrowed as she got lost in thought, staring right past Victoria. A woman pushed past them with a huge handful of items, entering the stall at the end.  
After a pause, Victoria laid a hand on Max's shoulder to get her attention. When Max looked back up, remembering that she was there, Victoria said quietly, "You know what I did almost as soon as I could walk freely after my bottom surgery? When I didn't need any more approval from any more doctors and any more therapists to look like myself?"

Max shook her head.

Victoria reached up, running her fingers through her cropped hair. "I cut off all my hair. I had grown it out for four years. I styled it almost every day. And as soon as I could, I chopped it all off and bleached it." Victoria paused for a second, then continued, "I always hated having long hair."

Max raised her hand slowly, hesitantly, towards Victoria's hair. She paused partway, as if asking for approval, and Victoria nodded.

As she ran her hand through Victoria's hair, she whispered, "That's too bad. I think I would like your hair long . . . it's so beautiful."  
Sensing Victoria's discomfort, perhaps, Max continued, "But that's not for me to decide."

Victoria wanted to kiss Max, she knew that much. She couldn't tell if it was because of how delicate Max's touch was, or the way she was looking into her eyes, or that Victoria had revealed something personal, or just that they were so close. Victoria had this impulse sometimes, of course, but she'd never known how to act on it. The only girl she had ever kissed . . . she had seen it in her eyes, Victoria was sure. She couldn't imagine any other reason why else she would have kissed her.

"Is it okay if I pick out another outfit for you?" Max asked, dropping her hand from Victoria's hair.

Victoria smiled. It helped diffuse that knot inside her, the one that pulled tighter every time something like this happened. "Of course." _Beat._ "No promises I'll buy it, though."

Max grinned, and that broke the tension, finally. "That's fair," she replied.

They spent the next twenty minutes or so flitting all over the women's section, although that composed about half of the entire floor they were on, with Max only stopping long enough at a rack to hold something over Victoria's body for a second. She seemed to know exactly what she was looking for - whatever it was, it was red. Red on black? Hmm, no, it looked like Max gave up on that idea rather fast. But after twenty minutes of this mad dash, Max was only holding three additional pieces of clothing from before - a red dress, white lace stockings, and red heels maybe three inches tall.

"Are you - are you seriously going to make me wear heels?" Victoria asked, once Max actually took the box with them. "I'll be a _giant_."

Max had already starting walking out of the shoe section, but she paused just long enough to look over her shoulder and say almost snidely, "Well, yeah, but a fucking hot one." And then she just kept walking, heels in hand.

 _Well, all right then_ , Victoria thought, lagging behind for a moment before jogging to catch up.

"Wait, where are we going now?" Victoria asked. They were headed to a part of the store they hadn't come to at all in the past hour and a half.

"To the part of the men's section where they have suits," Max replied.

Victoria stopped dead in her tracks - it was a pace or two before Max followed suit, turning back towards Victoria.

"Max," Victoria said cautiously, "I haven't worn any men's clothing since I was fourteen."

Max nodded in reply. "Yeah. And I haven't worn a dress since I was thirteen. But you dressed me up like a girl, and now I'm going to dress you a little more nonbinary."

"But I don't know if I'd ever wear something like that," Victoria protested.

"Fair, fair," Max said, taking a step back towards Victoria. "But you'd look killer in a suit."

* * *

And she did. The suit was red like her dress and her heels, which was a little too much for Victoria, but she couldn't pretend that she didn't look good. It was bright, and in your face, and it made her butt look good, and it was something she would absolutely never wear, and it made her look huge, and it also made her look hot. Very hot. Even Max's face told her that much.

"I . . . I don't know," Victoria said. It wasn't a custom suit like she would have wanted were she to buy one, and a good three hundred dollars cheaper than any suit she'd ever worn before. Moreover, it was a goddamn _suit_ , and she couldn't think of a place she'd go where she'd be caught dead in it.

Max answered, "Oh, you know. _You know_."

Victoria's voice rose in pitch as she got more distressed, "I know it looks good, I do, but I feel like this suit is walking imposter's syndrome and I'm so huge with this and the heels."

Max's voice was softer when she replied. "Is it too much?" she asked. "We can stop. You don't have to buy it. I think I just . . . wanted to make something beautiful I wasn't so scared of."

Victoria turned back towards her changing room mirror, taking a step closer to it. She fluffed up her hair. She pulled her jacket taut. She turned to one side, and then the other. Then she just hummed quietly to herself.  
"I guess I could have it tailored," she said, thinking aloud.

In the mirror, Max's face brightened. "Really? You'll buy it?"

Victoria nodded, exhaling loudly. "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. It's only fair, right? Well, in the kind of fair where I have fuck-tons of money for clothes, but yeah."

Max grinned as Victoria turned back around. "Now let me get changed," Victoria said, Max stepping back as she closed the door.

By the time she'd taken the suit jacket off and stepped out of her heels, there was a knock at the door.

"Yeah Max?"

"Victoria . . . do you like me?"

The knot in Victoria's chest returned suddenly, the rope of nervousness brushing over her neck in warning.  
"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, are you attracted to me?"

Tighter. "What . . . what's bringing this on?"

"I'm very attracted to you. I mean, I haven't been doodling our names in little hearts in my notebook but I . . . like you."

Tighter. "Well I . . ." _tighter_. "I like you too, Max. You kind of fascinate me."

There was a little chuckle from outside, and then Max responded, "I'm glad."

There was a pause, and then Max's voice appeared again, "Victoria. Would you like to have sex with me?"

Victoria thought she might choke. "Uhhh," Victoria mumbled, then, "like, right now?"

Max only said, "Yeah."

 _Oh god.  
Oh my fucking god.  
She wants to have sex in the changing room.  
Do I want to have sex with her?  
Okay, okay, fine, I'm a little curious, but here? Seriously?  
Okay, wait, maybe that's fine. I've seen like two people come in this whole time, and I can totally masturbate quietly, at least.  
Am I seriously going to fuck Max in a changing room?  
What if she's joking?  
What if I say yes and she's actually joking?  
Will she make fun of me?  
But what if I take it as a joke and she's not joking?_

"You still there?" Max asked.

"Uhhhhh yeah. Hold on."

After a second longer of hesitation, Victoria unlatched the door and pulled it open. Max stood there, no different from before, in her freaky t-shirt and faded jeans. This was nothing like the first time. This wasn't a seduction. This was . . . curiosity. For both of them.

"Can I kiss you?" she asked. It was soft, forceless, like when she'd reminded Victoria they didn't have to buy the suit. It was different. This was definitely different.

Victoria nodded, and Max stepped forward, standing on her toes as she held Victoria's face and kissed her. The first kiss was soft, just warm and gentle and hesitant. They barely knew each other. Their bodies weren't familiar with each other. That was only to be expected. But the second kiss was hard, and Victoria inhaled sharply in surprise. By the time it was over, Victoria was panting, and she could taste lipstick.

"Oh."

Max stepped in as Victoria took a step back, and the door was latched behind them a second later. Then Victoria was up against the mirror, the glass cool against her legs and neck while Max was very, very warm. Why wouldn't she be? She was always wearing that damn sweat shirt.  
Oh, nevermind, that was the first thing to go.

As Max's kisses started anew on Victoria's neck, she blurted out, "I've wanted you this whole time." It almost sounded like a whine. Victoria wasn't even sure why she said it.

Max pulled back, blinking a few times in rapid succession. Then she said, "Me too."

Victoria hadn't taken off any of her clothes (she didn't even know if she was going to), but she felt naked, exposed when the truth was out there instead of in her hand. That was how the knot stayed so tight, but it was also what kept her from unraveling. Being in total control of her feelings was her way of being in total control of herself.

Max made a twirling motion with her finger, and then said, "Turn around."

Victoria obeyed, turning until Max's hand fell on her hip, stopping her. The zipper on the back of Victoria's dress started coming undone, and after it, a trail of kisses down Victoria's spine. No, this was nothing like the first time. That had been so . . . sloppy, so careless. Max kissed every notch on Victoria's spine, and nothing felt like the first time.

Victoria's dress was on the floor, and Max's kisses finally ended. There must be pink spots all over Victoria's skin. They really should have used lipstick that didn't come off so easy.

"Why don't you sit down?" Max whispered. "It'll be easier."

Victoria complied. She was nervous. Although this was what she wanted, there was still that little voice telling her that something could go wrong, that Max wouldn't like her, that there would be regrets.  
As Max's fingers hooked into the band of her underwear, Victoria caught her hands, halting everything for a second. Max looked up at her, unsure of whether or not that was a sign to stop.

"Let me . . . let me do it," Victoria said, and Max dropped her hands as Victoria slid her underwear onto the floor. Victoria swallowed, and said, "Kiss me."

Confusion - finally _something_! - emerged on Max's face. "Where?" she asked.

Victoria covered her mouth as she giggled, then said, "My mouth, you ass."

Max stood up from her crouch, bracing herself on the bench as she leaned over. "Well, hey, it was a little unclear, okay?"

"Okay," Victoria said, knotting her fingers in Max's hair as they kissed.

Then the kiss broke from their lips, and down Max went her neck, her chest, her stomach, her navel, her-

"You're going to get your lipstick everywhere," Victoria wined. It was already smeared all over Max's face.

Max only smiled, lowering face so that Victoria couldn't see her mouth anymore. "I don't give a fuck about my lipstick," she said, and then Victoria gasped.

* * *

 **September 7, 4:16pm**

Max seemed to take the 'eating' part of 'eating ice cream' very seriously. Victoria was pretty sure she'd never seen someone older than six actually try and bite ice cream, and here was Max doing it in rapid succession.

"Oh my God," Victoria exclaimed, "doesn't that hurt your teeth?"

Max licked her lips and then responded, "Why would it hurt my teeth?"

"Because it's cold."

"Why would something being cold hurt my teeth?"

Victoria gave her the most neutral stare she could muster. "Because that's how it works."

Max shrugged, returning to her sugar cone. "Not for me."

They were sitting off the trail somewhere at Council Crest park, whose reviews included several recommendations to make out on the hills. Victoria had no idea if that's what they were here to do, really, but none of the other parks had that even suggested in their reviews. Plus, it had a fantastic view of the city, and that was the most important thing. The view always reminded Victoria of the Japanese gardens - it was too bad they didn't have time to visit on their day trip.

"So," said Max, "if I join the Vortex club after this, does that technically count as nepotism?"

God, Max was a messy eater, and it was distracting. She had ice cream on her cheek in two places - who does that at age eighteen?  
"You've got a little something, Max, here," Victoria said, swirling a finger on her own cheek.

"Huh? Oh, thanks."

"And as for your question - the Vortex Club doesn't pride itself on its democratic merits. It's more about rising to the nobility, you know, feudalism style."

Max's eyes popped way open sarcastically as she kept eating. "Oh, wow, that sounds totally awesome. Feudalism. Love that."

Victoria shrugged. "It is what it is?"

Max laughed at that and said, "Oh, of course, as long as you're on top 'it is what it is.'"

Victoria stuck her spoon in her mouth for a second, letting the ice cream melt in her mouth for a second. Then she replied, "Yep. And that's how you'll think when you're on top, too."

Max glanced at Victoria side-eye, a smirk on her face for a silent second. Then she shrugged. "Nah. Can't say I'm into that. That's how you get stuff like capitalism, art snobbery, and . . . gender." Max shivered at that last word.

Victoria accepted that in stride. "Those are like my favorite things, Max. I love being an art snob. I was born - no, _made_ to be an art snob."

"You're going to be great at it," Max said, nodding.

"Thanks, jerk," Victoria said, pushing Max's shoulder so she toppled over. Luckily, the ice cream stayed on its cone.

Once Max sat herself back up, she said, "See? See the violence inherent in the system? The oppression? Workers of the world unite, we-"

Victoria reached out again, but this time she grabbed Max's jacket. "Please shut up," she interrupted, and scooted closer to Max to kiss her. It was cold, and public, and just another thing she had never done, and it felt good.

They were both quiet after the kiss, returning to their ice cream. Well, in Max's case, finish chewing the cone, but that technically counted.

When she finished it, though, and there was nothing left to distract her, Max asked, "So, is that it? Are we friends who kiss sometimes now?"

Victoria shrugged. "I'm not the one who decided to toss a casual friendship aside to fuck in a changing room - I feel like you can answer that question better than I can."

Max laid back on the grass. It was shady where they sat, but Victoria could already tell Max was getting a sunburn. She was one of those people with pale skin who just got murdered by the sun, it seemed. Maybe that was why she kept the sweatshirt on all the time.  
"Hmm," Max hummed. "When I got accepted to Blackwell, I knew I'd only be coming back for a year. After that, it was college and a career, places where my decisions might matter, but here? The worst that could happen is I feel awkward around someone for a year, and then I'd never see them again. So I decided I wanted to be a slut while I still could."

Victoria nearly spit out her ice cream as she started laughing. Lucky that there wasn't enough for big bites left in the cup, perhaps.  
Max? Max wanted to be a slut? But she was so . . . well, not what Victoria pictured when she pictured a slut.

As Victoria settled down, she asked, "So what? This was your first pit stop on your adventure to be a slut?"

Now that the humor was starting to wear off, Victoria wasn't sure how she felt about that. It made her feel . . . cheap. It was a familiar feeling, and precisely the one Victoria had been hoping to avoid when she'd agreed to it. Then again, what else was she expecting of Max, exactly? What else did she even want out of her?

"I don't know," Max said after a short pause. "I don't think that's it. I wasn't kidding when I said I liked you. But I also . . . want to be kind of reckless, you know? And I'm not sure if you noticed but our classmates are kind of hot."

Victoria _hadn't_ noticed that, actually. Every beautiful person in a place like Arcadia Bay was rare, and their beauty and rarity made them dangerous in a place like this. It was always clear that they didn't belong - to themselves, and to the people around them.

Still, Victoria was getting the impression she knew Max even less than she had thought. "I get that you want to be reckless and all, and that this place is a dumpster you can just as well set fire to as you leave, but your actions still have consequences, Max. I don't mean to sound like an abstinence-only sex educator just . . . I don't know. Things can get pretty fucked up in a year, you know?"

Max laughed, turning to look up straight at Victoria. Even back in her old clothes, Max looked beautiful under the dappled sunlight. Victoria hadn't seen her eyes in the light before, really, but they were . . . good.  
"Actually, you sound more like Kate Marsh."

Victoria grimaced. That was even worse. "God, fine, I take it back. Fuck everybody, no regrets."

Max's chuckle continued, but she quieted down faster this time. "That's not an insult, you know. I like her."

 _Seriously? How are Max and I even friends, I swear to God._  
"Really? You don't find her, you know, irritating? Stuck up? Bitchy?"

"Nah," Max said, dismissing Victoria off-hand. "She seems sweet. Genuine. Really smart. And a little gay, question mark?"

 _What._ "What? What makes you say that?"

"She kind of asked me out on a date, maybe." Max's face pinched. "I'm not sure, but if she weren't Christian I definitely would think it was a date."

 _Well, that's unexpected._  
Victoria wasn't sure if that made her like Kate more or less. There was always a little bit of distrust she held for queer Christians, though she hadn't examined it very deeply. If she actually took the time to ask herself, a part of her knew it was how invalid her anger felt in the face of faith, but she carefully _did not_ ask herself.

A question appeared in Victoria's mind. She knew she shouldn't ask it - it would make her seem attached in a way she most certainly did not want to.  
It came out anyway. "So, this maybe date. What is it?"

Max looked up at the branches of the tree instead of at Victoria's face. "Kate's taking me to a coffee shop downtown tomorrow. She wants to study together, but it's for a class we haven't had any graded assignments in yet, and I clearly don't know what's going on. So I think she's just taking me out for coffee or tea because . . . gay?"

There was a short pause in which Victoria didn't know what to say.  
Luckily, Max was quick to fill in the gap in conversation. "What's your deal with her, anyway? It's like you disliked her on sight."

That wasn't true. Victoria had at first decided she simply didn't care one way or another about one of the new girls of photography. It wasn't until the end of class the first day that Victoria had settled on disliking her, and the reason was painfully obvious and obviously petty. Kate had taken Mr. Jefferson's TA role. Moreover, she had acted like she didn't even want, like she was doing it just to help out. No one was altruistic without motivation, especially when it came to the rich and famous. Victoria hated people who pretended to be better than they were.

"I guess . . ." Victoria started, but she had no ending for that sentence. What could she even say without sounding childish?  
"Everything she says seems too good. Like, practiced, 'please notice what a pure flower I am.' Real people aren't like that. They fuck up and have shitty ideas."

"Hmm," Max hummed. Then, she rolled on her side, forcing Victoria to turn a little to look her in the eye. "So what you're saying is that you think she's perfect, and that pisses you off."

"Ew, no. Fuck off." Max was starting to get on her nerves a little, prying a little too close. This was one of the main reasons why Taylor and Courtney were so easy to spend time with - they didn't ask questions they didn't need the answers to. Most of the time, Nathan was like that too - and even better, he didn't divulge things he didn't need to, either.

Well. Victoria couldn't pretend it had been easy to spend time with Nathan lately, exactly.

Max shrugged, dropping onto her back. "Suit yourself," she said, "but I think you'd actually like her, if you talked to her. She doesn't talk much, but when you get her going - well, she knows a shit-ton, I guess I'll just say that."

Victoria didn't want to hear this.  
"Max. If I kiss you and you promise not to overthink it once this trip's over, will you please shut up about Kate Marsh?"

"Hm. Deal."

This was going to get grass stains all over Victoria's clothes. And even if she'd asked Max not to overthink it, Victoria knew she'd be tearing this whole trip apart long after she'd washed the stains from her clothes and the lipstick from her skin.

* * *

 **September 7, 7:10pm**

As she pulled into the parking lot at Blackwell, the nervousness that had begun to grow throughout the trip back reached a head. Victoria had just had a very strange day with Max, and she wasn't sure what it ending meant. Max would finally have something to wear to Vortex Club stuff, so Courtney would finally feel comfortable letting her in. That was good. Victoria was pretty sure that was good.

As they both reached into the back for their bags, Max paused. "You know," she said, "I've never done anything like today. I hope it was okay."

Victoria didn't know what to say to that, really. It was so hard for her to tell what Max was feeling - when their eyes met, Max's eyes were almost just the same neutral, and Victoria never knew what came next.  
"Yeah, I haven't . . . either." _A half truth_. "But I think it was okay. I think we're . . ." _we're what? What are you even trying to say?_ "In the clear."

"Yeah," Max agreed, settling back into her chair with her bag in her lap. As she reached for her door, though, Victoria tapped her shoulder, trying to get her attention before Max left, and they were actually, really back at school.

Max looked back. If she knew what was coming, Victoria couldn't tell. She just leaned over the seat and kissed Max, and Max kissed her back. She brought her hands up to Victoria's hair, holding her in longer than Victoria had planned for.

Neither of them wanted their day trip to end. It felt like an entirely different car trip than the one they'd set out on.

Would things go back to normal after this? Or would this 'one more kiss' feeling linger in their classes, when they met in the hallway, at parties? If it did, what then?

Before Max left the car, she said, "Thanks for buying me the clothes. They're really pretty."

And all Victoria had to say in response was, "Yeah, of course."

And their trip was over.


End file.
